In at the moment’s quickly evolving digital world, leveraging the psychological ideas in promoting methods has grow to be an important factor for enterprise success. In at the moment’s post-COVID world, customers are spending a disproportionate period of time on streaming content material on Hotstar, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and a number of other different OTT (over-the-top) platforms built-in into good televisions.
At present, India has over 50 OTT platforms and their content material is commonly tailor-made to numerous units, i.e., good televisions versus cellular units.
Nonetheless, content material advertising and marketing on these platforms stays a puzzle, with no clear-cut pathways for content material success—resembling the kind of content material that ensures success or the promoting methods that entrepreneurs ought to make use of. On this context, it’s crucial to know the psychology behind content material advertising and marketing, particularly digital content material tailor-made to OTT and different free-to-use platforms.
The streaming content material revolution
When conventional TV dominated the drawing rooms, customers needed to put aside particular instances of the day to observe their favorite soaps. They needed to put up with myriads of ads throughout breaks and had no choice however to attend for complete seasons in the event that they missed any episodes.
That period has gone. Good content material is not a monopoly of enormous broadcasters.
At present, content material might be sourced from small content material producers, actors and manufacturing homes, and made accessible to finish customers by way of OTT platforms. With democratisation of the leisure world, entrepreneurs usually ponder how they’ll experience the digital content material tsunami.
From visible to multi-modal experiences
Content material consumption has developed from static visuals (photos) to audio-visual (conventional tv), to interactive audio-visual (e.g. Youtube) to audio-visual experiential (OTTs). The sensory experiences offered by OTTs are triggered by the modality of content material consumption which emphasises a sensible heuristic by making customers really feel they’re nearer to the tv character or internet sequence.
Customers really feel as if they’re a part of the narrative. This usually leads customers to begin a one sided dialog with themselves, growing an affective relationship with a tv sequence or a personality.
They might even impersonate the character(s), as in the event that they have been a part of the true circle of the characters’ pals and households. This imaginary emotional relationship with a celeb is called para-social relationship, which in the end results in intimacy with the celeb, thereby making customers glued to the brand new OTT format.
Understanding the viewer psychology
This modality-driven content material consumption fosters deeper viewer engagement by ‘narrative transportation’, the place audiences grow to be absorbed within the storyline. Each time customers count on a ‘narrative completion’, entrepreneurs can grip them utilizing a contemporary story line and artistic content material by audio-visual components resembling improved decision, encompass sound, and social interplay, that form viewers perceptions.
For instance, the content material producers assist the viewers to entry earlier episodes and watch them at leisure, launch a block of content material (three to 5 episodes) in order that they’ll binge watch collectively in a night, give no or minimal variety of advert breaks and eventually invite them to speak in regards to the expertise in celeb gossip reveals.
Many a time, customers come to OTT platforms to flee from actuality. This escape from actuality is a recurring diversion of thoughts to a purely imaginative exercise, resulting in leisure.
For instance, school college students watch their favorite episodes of Recreation of Thrones earlier than an examination. Right here, the viewers desires to have interaction in narrative transportation to flee from annoying occasions of life.
The upper the buyer want for escape, larger their gratification after watching their favorite internet sequence. Therefore, the entrepreneurs could contemplate timing their episode releases post-exams or within the evenings when viewers return house from work.
Bridging custom and trendy content material
Content material might be developed drawn from India’s wealthy traditions that could be neglected by mainstream media. At present, managers are outfitted to launch genres of cleaning soap operas with the very best leisure content material (e.g., historical past or fantasy) for a particular viewers that’s fluent in English and follows western traditions or values. Nonetheless, a big phase of viewers in India, primarily from tier-2 and tier-3 cities, nonetheless follows native traditions and attends the performances of classical music and people dances.
The absence of group house in tier-1 cities has pushed customers to rejoice festivals in their very own houses and with restricted sources. As household life is confined to 4 partitions and extra time is spent on work or commuting, little time is left for group values and traditions.
The entrepreneurs can embed culture-specific nuances of their episodes highlighting values past household, i.e., celebrations in a mohalla (neighbourhood), public gathering of feeding the aged, celebrating delivery of a brand new baby, and many others.
For instance, Tanishq celebrated Diwali with Ekatvam (Oneness) marketing campaign in 2020, celebrating India’s unity in range. It depicted totally different communities coming collectively to rejoice Diwali, highlighting inclusivity and concord. One other instance might be Surf Excel’s coming collectively sequence, ‘Daag Achhe Hain’ (Filth spots are good) giving a message that getting soiled is part of rising up and studying within the childhood.
Innovating promoting within the OTT period
Because the modal experiences proceed to evolve, providing new potentialities for brand-consumer engagement, entrepreneurs and advertisers want to supply revolutionary choices to technology-platform suppliers. Advertisers should be aware of altering media consumption behaviours, whereby customers select to observe a number of episodes of a sequence with out promoting interruptions.
They will give you revolutionary options for viewers. For instance, they could reward viewers with 1–2 episodes of free tv content material for watching a one-minute commercial or for filling up a small survey.
Alternatively, viewers could go for a 10-second business break between two episodes of a sequence. Such improvements will retain the viewers’ narrative transportation expertise and preserve them engaged with platforms.
– Dr Ambika Prasad Nanda, affiliate professor-marketing, Jagdish Sheth Faculty of Administration (JAGSoM), Bengaluru.
